“What are you going to do here?” she asked in exasperation, accepting the flower this time.
“Besides spending my days with you and the baby? Invest in people. Money is often the one thing that stops folks from reaching for their dreams. I know how to spot a good investment and how to work creative financing. I want to start small.” He warmed to his topic. “Creating a small business network in the mountains between Boise and Yellowstone, a referral program that helps small businesses support each other. For example, Mack over at the general store can refer people to the Standing Bear attraction, and Myrna can recommend people stop at Second Chance.”
“That’s a small thing.”
“That can make a big difference.” He was enjoying staring at her endearing face. “I’ve also got unfinished Monroe business here. The town, the unexpected cowboy. I have enough to do while waiting for the baby to come, including being your support system.”
Bernadette swallowed nervously, staring at his red boots again. “Is there something else in that box?”
“Yes. Something round.” Holden reached inside for a small cowboy hat. Baby-size and red. “I thought our little one would enjoy growing up like a cowboy rather than Manhattan royalty. Do you think your father would approve?”
She nodded, but slowly. “Is this where you ask me to marry you?”
“Well, now that you mention it...” Holden shook his head, smiling gently. “I haven’t gone through all the details yet that impact this negotiation and your decision to accept. Starting with an apology to you and begging for your forgiveness.”
“Oh.” She looked like no one had ever cared enough about her to lay everything on the line, heart and soul.
More than anything, he wanted his arms around her, but he had to stick to his plan or he’d forget to cover something. “From the beginning, Bea, you caught me flat-footed. I wasn’t expecting to meet the woman of my dreams in Second Chance. And because I wasn’t looking, from the beginning I said all the wrong things, such as I didn’t want a long-distance romance. Or I said nothing at all. Like not mentioning that I had a son and was afraid I’d screwed up the most important job I ever had—being a father. And when I got too deep in my head and it started to impact my health, I wasn’t fully present when I was with you. In fact, I stopped communicating with you at all. Looking back, I’m mortified at my behavior. And so, I’m offering you these flowers to tell you that I’m thrilled to have a second chance at fatherhood, and I’ll be thrilled to have a second chance with you.”
“Why?” Such a small word, and so filled with hurt.
“Because I love you, Bea. I. Love. You.” Finally, Holden felt it was time to drop down on one knee. “I’m not the man I was when I met you. I wear boots and jeans, and I want to get a horse out here.” One who had all the personality of Shortcake but perhaps didn’t love to swim. “I know I’m a bad bet. I’m a stressed-out wreck of a man. I don’t know where I want to be in five years. But that just means I’m open to whatever roads open up for the two of us. Because I know I want to be with you now and fifty years from now. I love you, Bea. And the elephants get really unhappy when I face the possibility of life without you.”
Bernadette wiped away a tear. “This might be the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
“Because they’re truths, honey.” He reached for her. “Ask me anything. Tell me anything. But let me be here for you and with you.”
She moved closer, linking their hands.
He never wanted to let her go. But there was one thing about contracts, whether they were for matters of business or for matters of the heart: you had to get agreement to one last question.
“Will you marry me, Bea? Will you accept the fact that I love you but that I’m a work in progress?”
“You trust me to help fix your engine,” Bernadette said softly.
It took Holden a moment to catch on. “The check-engine-light metaphor.”
“Yes.” She nodded. And finally, a smile began to appear on her beautiful face, a smile that promised kisses were in his future. “I love you, Holden. I loved you when you were a hot mess. And I’m honored that you’d trust me with your heart.”
“I trust you with everything, darling, most especially my heart.”
EPILOGUE
IT WAS THE best summer ever.
Devin had discovered life outside of a textbook. Who would’ve thought that could happen?
He was working outdoors, giving tours through historic Standing Bear, which gave him a new appreciation for the past, and leading trail rides through scenic meadows and mountain trails. He hadn’t worn a pair of khakis since he’d returned to Standing Bear. He got up every day and put on blue jeans and boots, worked hard, kissed Frankie and went to bed happy.
Devin was becoming a better rider, not because his dad wanted him to or because the family owned a ranch but because he wanted to ride Shortcake across the river without getting wet.
On this, the last day of summer, Devin was determined to make it across.
“You have big dreams, nerd.” Frankie sat on Milky Way, the dappled gray mare that bossed other horses around, same as Frankie liked to boss Devin.
“My great-grandpa always told me dreams were best when they were supersize.” Devin gathered up Shortcake’s reins. “It’s one of the reasons I started saying I’d find a cure for cancer.”
They headed toward the river.
“Speaking of dreams, I’ve got a lot of homework tonight.” Frankie had enrolled in online summer school to help her catch up on the classes she’d missed last term. “Do you know what my term paper theme is?”
“Nope.” Devin patted Shortcake’s neck.
“What I learned this summer.” Frankie sounded exasperated.
“You’ve got this.” She’d learned so much. They both had. About the world, their families and themselves. “What are you going to write?”
“You’ll think it’s stupid.” She tugged her cowboy hat lower on her head.
“You know I won’t.”
Frankie huffed. “My theme is going to be that my path is my path. I shouldn’t measure myself by someone else’s yardstick.”
“And this makes you unhappy?” Devin held Shortcake back at the top of the trail, needing to see Frankie’s expressive face.
She wrinkled her nose. “My theme is I shouldn’t measure myself, even though I do.”
“And yet, you don’t let it hold you back. Your family won’t let you, either. Not anymore.”
“Family’s important.” Frankie tugged at a lock of hair. It had grown to her shoulders and filled in, and it was still mostly purple. “Being honest with them and those you care about is important, too.”
“Agreed.” He and Dad were getting along better than ever, seeing each other at least once a week. “Maybe that should be your theme.”
It was Dad who turned his year around. He’d won over Bea and was working at mastering the art of self-care, which he said was necessary to get the better of the anxiety elephants rather than allowing the anxiety elephants to get the better of him.
“I think I can come up with more words to do with my struggle not to compare myself. And if I’m being honest...” Frankie gave Dev a mischievous grin “...I’d say you are about to get soaking wet.” She nodded toward the river at the bottom of the slope.
“No way.” Devin scoffed. He’d ridden Shortcake on a lot of trail rides this summer. The gelding now respected him as a rider. Besides, the river was low in August. The last few times they’d crossed, Shortcake had been wading in the water. The old horse knew his days of swimming were over. Devin had everything under control.
Everything but an old runaway roan who loved nothing more than someone on a trail ride taking a short swim in a fast-flowing river. Even if it was his rider.
* * *
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The Texan’s Secret Son
by Kit Hawthorne
CHAPTER ONE
“ANY LUCK?” ELIANA called from the other side of the dressing-room curtain.
Marcos grunted in reply. He felt like he was fourteen again and any second now his mother would come barging in and start pointing out everything that was wrong with what he was trying on. Eliana even sounded like their mom, all cheerful and bossy.
“Come out so I can see,” she said. “There’s a three-way mirror out here.”
“You don’t need to see,” said Marcos. “They’re fine.”
The curtain whooshed back, and his sister burst in.
“Hey!” Marcos said. “A little privacy here?”
“Oh, relax. I heard you zip the zipper.”
Then her face got all focused. She looked him over and said, “No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean those jeans are wrong for you.”
“They fit fine.”
“The cut is wrong. You need a roomier thigh.”
“Are you saying these jeans make me look fat?”
“I’m saying you’re too buff for them, Marcos. I’m saying that on your body type, straight-leg jeans look like skinny jeans.”
He checked himself out in the mirror again. Hmm. Maybe she had a point. Marcos had been wearing mostly uniforms for the past twelve years, and there might be some things about men’s fashion he’d missed.
But he wasn’t about to learn from his six-years-younger baby sister. He’d been driving a tractor on the ranch while she was still rolling around on the floor with her stuffed bunny. He’d taught her to tie her shoes. She was supposed to look up to him, not order him around like some little kid.
Eliana frowned. “Although...you are thinner than when I saw you last. Like ten to fifteen pounds’ worth, I’d say.”
He shrugged. It had been more like twenty, but he was slowly gaining it back.
“Still,” she went on, “your quads are too big for this cut. You need to try a regular and a relaxed in classic wash.”
“These are good enough, Ana. I’m not gonna go back out there and root around for regular this and relaxed that.”
She handed him something folded and denim. “Well, lucky for you I already did. Now try them on. Both pairs.”
They had a brief staring contest before Marcos took the jeans and said again, “Little privacy, here?”
Eliana went out and pulled the curtain shut, but not before Marcos saw that tiny triumphant smile.
He took off the straight-legs and pulled on one of the others, grumbling to himself. His last day off before the start of mandatory overtime at the factory, and how was he spending it? Shopping. For clothes. There was nothing wrong with the clothes he had. But Eliana always got her way. Part of it was bossiness, part of it was charm and part of it was bribing him with dinner.
Eliana stuck a green shirt past the curtain and waved it at him.
“Just look at this color, Marcos! It would be fabulous on you. Really bring out the green in your eyes.”
“My eyes are brown.”
“They’re hazel. Brown on the outside, green on the inside.”
Wow. She was correcting him on his eye color now?
“It’s too bright,” he said. “I’d look like a tree frog.”
“It is not! It’s a lovely rich shade and it would suit you perfectly. Just try it.”
He snatched the shirt out of her hand and pitched it onto the floor.
Ever since Marcos had come back home, Eliana had felt like a stranger to him. She’d been so young when he enlisted, just fourteen. Still complaining about algebra and wearing sparkly stuff on her face and dotting the I in her name with a little flower. Now she was this elegant, confident woman with perfectly manicured nails and an unending stream of sophisticated boyfriends with names like Julian.
Of course, she’d always been pretty—the kind of pretty that attracted guys in droves. His other sister, Dalia, was pretty too, but she had a way about her that kept guys at a distance, and anyway she’d only ever had eyes for one guy, who was now her husband. So high school had been pretty straightforward for her, romancewise. Eliana was a whole ʼnother story. But by the time she started high school, Marcos was gone, serving his country. From what he heard, he’d missed a lot of drama.
Huh, these jeans really did look better on him.
Yeah, and a lot of good that would do him in the days and weeks to come as he stood at his station in the factory, doing the same thing over and over, hour after hour, shift after shift, with nothing to make one minute any different from the next except the company of his asinine coworkers. They were such morons, with their lame private jokes and constant complaining about having to work for a living. At the end of the shift, they liked to go out for drinks together, as if eight hours in each other’s company wasn’t more than enough. They never asked Marcos to join them. Not that he wanted to, but it would’ve been nice to be asked so he could say no. They all looked at him like he was some kind of freak, like they were waiting for him to explode.
He hated that job—but it was the only one he’d been able to land since his discharge from the Marines.
He changed into his own jeans, picked up the pile of jeans and the green shirt and stalked out of the dressing room. He tossed all but one pair of jeans toward the discard rack.
Eliana gave a longing look at the green shirt, but perked up when she saw the jeans he was holding on to. “You’re getting them? You’re actually taking my advice?”
“Oh, are these one of the ones you brought me? Yeah, they’re okay.”
He couldn’t let baby sister think she knew too much. It would set a bad precedent.
She rolled her eyes.
“You need to be more deliberate about this whole thing, Marcos. You need to learn to dress for both your body type and your fashion style.”
“I don’t have a fashion style.”
“Of course you do. You are the rebel type. You’ve got that whole brooding bad-boy thing going on. It’s a good look for you. But you have to be careful not to overdo it, or you’ll just look like a criminal.”
“I don’t look like a criminal. I don’t even have any ink.”
“But you repel people with your glowering silence and overall demeanor. And then there’s your hair.”
“What about my hair?”
“What about it? You barely have any! You need to let it grow. It’s been ten weeks since you were discharged and still it’s barely more than a quarter-inch long on top and nothing but scalp on the sides.”
“High and tight. That’s how I like it.”
“It makes you look unapproachable.”
“Good.”
“And you have such nice hair too! So glossy and thick with that hint of curl. I’d like to see you try an undercut, or maybe a less extreme fade that’s longer overall. What you have now looks like no guard at all, or maybe number-one guard. What if you tried a number eight on top, fading to a three or maybe a two? Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“I don’t know how you even know so much about men’s haircuts and clipper-guard sizes, but an eight is way too long. I’d look like a hippie.”
“Hippie? We’re talking about one inch of hair!”
“Not doing it.”
She sighed hard. “Oh, Steve. You’re so stubborn.”
The old nickna
me almost made Marcos smile. It had been a long time since anyone called him Steve.
In the end, he bought two pairs of regular-cut jeans and some new black T-shirts, a whole stack identical to each other and to the black T-shirts he already owned. Eliana didn’t say anything, but he could feel her fuming all the way to the parking lot.
But she cheered up once they got in her car.
“I hope you’re hungry,” she said. “I’m starving.”
Right on cue, his stomach let out a loud growl.
She laughed at that, and for a second she looked like the Eliana he used to know. He even smiled a little himself.
Then she took out her phone and started texting.
“Who’re you talking to? Is it that guy Julian or whatever?”
Eliana didn’t even look up. “His name is Nigel, and no, it’s not him. That’s over.”
“Over? Since when? You were just telling me about him yesterday.”
“I broke it off this morning.”
She didn’t look upset, but maybe there was more to the story. There had to be. This was just a brave front.
“What did he do? Do I need to pay him a visit?”
She smiled but didn’t look up from her phone. “Aw, Steve, that’s so sweet. But unnecessary. Nigel didn’t do anything terrible. He just wasn’t very mature.”
She put her phone away and started the car.
“Well, who’d you text, then?”
“Dalia. To tell her we’re going to be late.”
Marcos snorted. “She knows you’re going to be late. You’re always late.”
“I am not! Anyway, I wanted her to be on the lookout for my friend who’s joining us.”
“A new boyfriend? That was fast, even for you.”
“No! Just a friend.”
Marcos smelled a rat. “Are you trying to set me up?”
Caught by the Cowboy Dad Page 23
